Love Will Tear Us Apart, Again
by drunkenboat
Summary: Is loving someone worth forgetting everything about them? Would you erase the good to get rid of the bad? Have you ever just wished you could start over? Two crazy kids madly in love answer those questions the hard way...(Not about the original characters, just the concept. Very personal story, angsty af)
1. The Pain It Takes to Stop Feeling Pain

**"I hate you! Don't ever fucking talk to me again!" The rage in her voice pierced his thoughts.**

 **Sirens flashed red and blue in the night, lights bounced across his mind as the scenery changed, now he was at a coffee shop he couldn't quite name. He looked up,** _ **someone**_ **was taking a sip of their drink, but he couldn't make out their face. All he could make out was static, a static that consumed the entirety of the world around him, and when it was gone he found himself in a…where was he? Lights were flashing, people were dancing, music was blaring. Music he couldn't quite understand the words to, although he was sure he had heard the song somewhere before the melody remained elusive. He tried surveying the stage to try and find the name of the band, but he felt someone grab his hand.**

 **"Come on why don't we go outside?" Again he couldn't make out their face, the voice was female, and had a comforting familiarity about it, but at the same time it sounded oddly foreign, as though it belonged to a complete stranger. He followed them to the door leading to the outside patio, noticing that among the crowds the only face that he couldn't see was the one belonging to the woman he was following.**

 **As they walked outside, he found himself in strange new surroundings. He was in someone's house. A house he didn't recognize, but a house he was sure he had been in before. The walls were decorated with posters, a bookshelf in the corner was covered in books that had no titles, the television in in the middle of the wall was on, but whatever was playing he couldn't make out. He looked down at himself and found even the shirt had some form of indecipherable hieroglyphics on it now. The girl was sitting next to him, although as time went by she appeared less like a girl and more of a vague blur. Something about that filled him with overwhelming anxiety, something about the disappearance of her form scared him, so he tried to reach out and hold her. He felt like if he could just hold her then it would keep her form together, he felt like if he could hold her it would keep** _ **him**_ **together. When he wrapped his arms together though, he found they were empty. Any traces of the girl had disappeared, and soon the world around him followed.**

With the scenery of his mind gone, there was nothing left keeping Bernard Daniels anchored in his dreams. In the moment of waking up, he was hit with an alarming sense of despair. He tried desperately to fall back asleep, to go back to those warm feelings that the dream had given him, but he knew it was no use. With a strong sense of reluctance, the young man rose out of bed, a single mattress on the floor of a room that reflected a sincere sense of apathy in its occupant. Various articles of clothing were strewn across the floor, while the closet opposite his bed was mostly filled with dirty laundry and two jackets. Near the foot of the bed was a cardboard box filled with random books, along with his phone and phone charger. A single table was set up near him, with old dishes and a mostly empty cup of ramen noodles. While the room was a mess, there was a rather depressing sense of emptiness about the room, a feeling of loneliness that Bernard couldn't quite figure out. Attempting to put it out of his mind, Bernard picked up his cellphone and a pack of cigarettes from the table and went to the balcony of his apartment.

 _"I think I fell in love with the girl I dreamt about last night….I hate those kinds of dreams, when I feel happy and I'm with some beautiful girl, and then I wake up."_ Bernard typed into the memo app on his phone. _"I don't hate the dreams themselves, it's the waking up that I hate. The feeling of some warm, beautiful reality just being ripped away from me, the feeling that all that happiness was so brief and fleeting and there's no way to go back to it because it never fucking existed. Then I wake up and I'm just here…just sort of existing., and it pales in comparison to something that never truly existed. There's some kind of mysterious texture to those kinds of dreams, something that I don't think I've ever felt in the real world….Sometimes I just wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. I wish I could remember more about it, everything came in brief flashes, but it all felt so real…All I can really remember was a girl."_

Bernard saved the entry, and labelled it Dream Journal No.1. He had been meaning to record his dreams for awhile now, after reading some internet article about lucid dreams and the astral plane and that kinda shit. It struck a chord with him, feeling lost in his own life was something he had become painfully used to, and any means of escaping the world around him was very appealing. Now that he had written down as much as he could, Bernard lit up a cigarette and stared off into the cityscape in front of him. Even though it was early spring, the sun was beating down like an oppressive tyrant, shining off the ugly pastel pain of the buildings around him and creating a harsh brightness that made Bernard feel quite unhappy. Walking down the streets the old buildings and unforgiving sun made him feel like he was in his own special kind of Hell, one he could never escape from no matter how hard he tried. He lived in a district of Los Angeles near the beach, while it was the place he had grown up he hated it with a passion. He had spent the last two years of his life drifting from place to place, crashing on couches and renting rooms where he could afford them, until he ran out of money and wound up renting a room with a close friend. The shame of coming back was almost enough to kill him, especially since he made sure to give a big "Fuck You!" to everyone he used to hang out with. As he finished his cigarette, a sudden realization came to him, he had forgotten the significance of the day, for some reason.

 _"I was supposed to register for college classes today, wasn't I?"_ With that realization Bernard left his apartment, something about it felt quite urgent, a feeling of unknown priority he rarely ever felt these days.

A young woman sat on a grey hound bus, alone and weary. The last of her tears had dried up awhile ago, and now all she could do was stare into the black abyss of the big empty sky. The farmlands in between Oregon and California seemed to stretch on forever and ever, and every time she thought about where she was going she wanted to turn back. There was no turning back though, there was no home to go to. She could never forgive him, not again. Not again and again and again. It was too fucking much for her to handle.

 _"Fucking asshole"_ Was the conclusive thought she came to.

She decided not to think about him anymore, nor the home she had left behind. She slipped in her earbuds, and played a song that….That should have warned her. She realized, remembering the first real fight they had gotten. Sighing in frustration she turned on the song "Waste of Paint" and did the best she could to disassociate from the wreckage of her failed relationship.

Bernard returned home drunk…Drunk wasn't the right word for it, he was completely wasted, stumbling and slurring, a complete mess of a human being in fact. He walked along the sidewalk, nearly slipping half a dozen times on the frozen sidewalk, an unwanted ice skating rink that made getting anywhere a fucking hazard, to say the least. He had been piecing together an apology in his head the whole walk home, but when he got home and stepped into his room, he found out there really wasn't any point. The room was now half empty, all traces of her were gone, completely. On the bed was a note, which simply said "Goodbye." He fell on the bed and started to cry, uncontrollably. In fact it was probably the most he had cried since he was a small child. So it was that Bernard Daniels had to return home, the home he had tried so hard to escape.

It was three weeks after this occurrence that Ken Rydell returned home from work, he had an early day that today, and he wanted to invite his buddy Bernie out to a bar, to cheer him up. Without thinking about it he casually opened the door to Bernard's room…and found him standing on a chair with a noose tied around his neck.

"Oh goddammit dude! No! Fuck no!" It was an automatic response "What the fuck are you doing man!?" Ken knew the situation probably called for delicacy, but he was in no mood to sugarcoat anything.

Bernard wanted to explain himself rationally, wanted to tell his friend that it was the end of the line for him, that he couldn't live without her. The words just didn't come to him. He had written it all down so nicely in a note that was sitting on his table, next to an empty bottle of whiskey and another bottle that was only half empty. Instead he decided to let his friend cut the noose off him, and he stepped off the chair and sat on it instead. Ken decided he needed a drink, he took the remaining whiskey and drank a bit of it. Then he picked up the suicide note Bernard had written, and without reading it crumpled it up and threw it to the side. Ken was 27, a few years older than Bernard. For this reason he treated him like a younger brother and tried to look out for him. When he needed a place to stay, Ken made it happen. It wasn't just the age difference that set them apart, Ken was much more _together_ than Bernard. There was a sense of stability he had that his young friend clearly lacked, and as the days after his break up went by, that instability became more and more apparent in Bernard.

"So..what happened dude? I know your break up really fucked you up man but…What the fuck man? I mean haven't you two broken up before?" Ken took another sip of whiskey, for good measure and good advice.

"It's…different this time…" The words came slowly, they were hollow and hopeless "I..went to Portfolio's to try and talk to her, to try and fix things…She was there but…she didn't recognize me. At first I thought it was deliberate but there was something so real about it. I tried talking to her but it just…it wasn't right…I don't know what to do, it's like…there's nothing left." Bernard grabbed the bottle of whiskey from his friend, took another drink, and laid his head down on his lap.

"Ahh shit dude….Ok I know what happened, but you're not gonna like it…Funny enough I had a friend do this while you were up North…So there's this company right? They're not all that public, in fact I'm pretty sure the only way to find them and make appointments is through the dark web. From what I understand, they have a way of completely erasing someone from your mind. No memories, no feelings, nothing. It sounds like bullshit at first but from what I've seen it really works. Then they send out these weird emails telling all your friends and stuff not to mention so and so to whoever gets the treatment done. They say it might cause a nervous breakdown or something." Ken decided to go through his phone and check for the message he had gotten regarding his old friend, and show it to Bernard, for evidence.

"She…fucking erased me? Like everything is just gone?" Bernard choked, taking another swig of whiskey.

"I mean…that's what it seems like to me man. I tell you what though, you probably couldn't afford it on your own, _buuuut_ since your my friend and I love you and I don't want you to friggin kill yourself I'll pay for you to do it too. No more heartbreak or depression, you can forget all about Margaret and get on with your life.' The offer was quite sincere, wanted his friend to be happy and move on, and if this was how to do it so be it. WIith a final shot of whiskey, Bernard agreed, then passed out.

 **Author's notes: Sooo..yeah this is the first thing I've wroted/submitted in a long ass time. I don't even really know if anyone's gonna read this because the margin of Eternal Sunshine fans who are also into fan fiction of it seems pretty fucking slim…Still, this story is mostly being wroted because it's a retelling of a relationship that has seriously fucked me up and this move has relevance…Really it has nothing to do with Joel and Clementine it just takes place in a world where the ability to erase your memories of someone is a thing, because that seems such a poignant and bittersweet construct that I had to write my own story…Enjoy?**


	2. Snow Angels

**Author's Notes: Jeezus Christ I had this whole story planned out, but the bender I went on this weekend completely erased my memories, which I find quite ironic considering the subject matter….Also, if anyone cares, the official soundtrack to this chapter is Hated Because of Great Qualities by Blonde Redhead. It's a fucking fantastic song and in the very unlikely event someone is reading this I'd highly recommend giving it a listen.**

Bernard arrived at the Lacuna building with a box, a box filled with everything that might remind him of Margaret. In the digital age, this box didn't contain much, but what it did contain was so precious to him that it felt like he was giving up a baby to an adoption agency. There was a strip of pictures they got in a photo booth, a couple of odd toys and trinkets and posters and such that they used to decorate their old room back in Oregon, as well as a few sci-fi books that he got on her recommendation. The most vital of all the boxes contents, the thing that was hardest for him to give up, was a journal she had bought him. Not only was it a gift from her, he had filled it with plenty of sappy cheesy love poems, songs they tried to write together, and a few drawings she had done herself.

Knowing he would have to give it up almost made him change his mind, the idea of giving up something so beautiful, so meaningful, so important to him destroyed him inside. The thing is, he was already ruined, and with a little convincing from his friend he realized he needed to give it up. He needed to give everything up, if he ever wanted to be happy again. No matter how much it meant to him, it was equally bitter and devastating to him that she had already given all these things up. In the end, these things that meant so much to him now, wouldn't mean a thing to him when it was all over. They would be forgotten and so would Margaret. All the joy and love they had shared would melt away, but so would the intense pain he felt from losing her. So he brought it all, and handed it over to the doctor.

"Great! If this is everything then we can begin the treatment!" The doctor said with what seemed like forced enthusiasm. The doctor had an uncanny resemblance to Frodo from Lord of the Rings, which made Bernard even more sad, since Margaret loved that movie.

Bernard followed the doctor to go to the back room with much apprehension, realizing this was his last chance to turn back. He felt nervous, the kind of nerves he got as a child going on a roller coaster or a water slide. He felt intense anxiety, and tried examine various features of the hallway they were walking down. He looked down at the floor and tried to find the pattern of the floor tiles, though their simplicity offered little distraction, so he tried focusing on the wall instead, trying to figure out the exact word for their pale blue coloring, trying to recall the names that one finds on crayons or buying paint. As he was trying to distract himself Bernard realized that they had been walking for a lot longer than he expected. It was as if the hallway itself was endless, stuck on a loop. Upon noticing this, the whole world around him flickered for a brief moment. That was when Bernard realized that he was not in fact at the Lacuna building.

"Right in here please, just sit down and I'm going to begin some memory conditioning and association." The hobbit-looking doctor finally arrived at a door, but when Bernard looked into it he found himself staring into the room that he and Margaret shared in Oregon. Bernard reluctantly stepped through, he realized it was not his last chance to turn back, there was no turning back now.

"You wanna know _why_ I think you fucked him!?" Bernard felt a pit in his stomach as he heard this, he knew where he was. He was now a third party to the observer to the fight that ruined everything. Margaret stood in front of him, slightly drunk as tears streamed down her face.

"Because you're a fucking psycho!?" Now that he was observing the fight instead of participating, Bernard was able to see the mix of hatred and heartbreak in her eyes, and it devastated him. Seeing her cry like that, and knowing he had been the one to cause it filled him with guilt and self-loathing. Then he realized what would happen next, and he tried lunging at the drunken, crazed memory of himself.

"It's because you're a fucking whore! You've been fucking lying to me this whole time!" He yelled back, and threw the beer bottle he was holding at the wall. The impact hit the wall, splashing Margaret with beer, and causing the wall to be cracked open, behind it was television static. Margaret was horrified by the outburst.

"Get out….get out now! I'm calling the cops you fucking asshole!" She began sobbing again, and grabbed her phone from her pocket and dialed 911. The other Bernard, the memory, left the house after fruitlessly begging her to change her mind. As he left Margaret's crying became softer and quieter, with only her and the real Bernie in the room.

"Can you really blame me? For wanting to forget you…How could I ever live with the memory that someone I loved so much could treat me like this?" She asked him.

"I…I didn't know…I couldn't see how horrible I treated you when I was….When it still mattered" Trying to explain it only made him feel worse. The whole scene that played out left him feeling terrible.

"I think you need to go too." Her voice was firm and resolute, no weakness no sympathy. Bernard walked out the door.

When he left he was definitely outside their apartment, although he found himself reliving a completely different memory. The ground was covered with freshly fallen snow, blanketing the tow in a comfortable sort of cold that made it all the more pleasant to stay inside. Bernard and Margaret were not outside however, Margaret had never seen snow before and so they went out to play around and have fun like they were children. They made snow angels, tried building a snowman very unsuccessfully, and finally decided upon throwing snowballs. They didn't care about the immaturity, they didn't care if people were watching them, it was too beautiful to care. As the two started throwing snowballs at each other, the fake Bernie ended up hitting the real one quite a few times. The two ran towards each other and Margaret pulled him in for a kiss. They locked lips for a moment, and then Margaret stared deep into his eyes.

"I love you, and I'll always love you." She said,with more sincerity and compassion than Bernard had ever heard in his life.

"I can't take this anymore" The real Bernard said aloud, audibly distraught. He couldn't bear it, seeing the best moment of his life replayed knowing it would all be ruined, knowing it would be forgotten, knowing that it would live and die one last moment in his head before disappearing forever, just like the snow angels they made. He shut his eyes, covered his ears, tried everything he could do to move on to the next memory, to try and make it disappear, and it did, it all faded away.

 **AU: Sorry, I'm really quite shit when it comes to dialogue. If you hate my story please be sure to troll the comments.**


	3. Only Emptiness Shall Remain

**Author's Notes: Fuckin…the theme song for this one is…it's fuckin Shimmy Shammy Ya by Ol Dirty cuz…cuz shit's about to get fucking RAW!**

Reliving the past can be painful, even looking back at the good times can hurt when you compare them to the bad times. Bernard was learning this the hard way, the very hard way, the concrete fucking solid way. In an effort to forget everything, he had been forced to remember all of it in rapid succession. Thus every painful memory had been thrusted into the forefront of his psyche, occasionally juxtaposed by the happy times they shared, only to be ruined by a reminder of the shitty things he had done to taint those pure perfect moments forever. He was forced to deal with the realization that every beautiful moment he shared with Margaret had been subsequently tainted by his jealousy or his distrust or some other toxic shit that he was now witnessing from the outside. It made him sick, it made him sad, it made him want to grab a knife and stab that illusion of his past to death. Sadly, it was not so easy, no matter how he tried to stop himself, to change things, to rewrite history, he found himself powerless.

The memory he was currently facing was an argument, which at the time seemed quite significant, was actually quite petty. It's actual prominence was increased tenfold by the extremities he was bringing it to. They were sitting two chairs across from each other, in their room in Oregon, the TV was on and Margaret had been trying to get him to watch Game of Thrones and shut the fuck up about social media.

"Sooo….Lemme get this straight…You think its totally cool to like your ex boyfriends shit? Like you don't think that's giving off some kind of signal that you're…still interested…" The memory of Bernard snarled, every word seemed deliberately chosen to hurt her.

"Dude, can you just drop this? Please? I already told you it's not a big deal…" Margaret's voice was defensive, but not because she had something to hide. It was defensive in the sense that she was defending her sanity, her dignity, her logical mind from the jealousy and bullshit her partner had been spewing.

"So ya know my friend, she hits me up a lot…Very sexual if I do say so myself? Maybe I should hit her up instead? Cuz she wanted to fuck me when you were being a bitch and ignoring me annnnddd….and it seems like you're just OK with all these guys trying to fuck you." Bernard's words were carefully chosen, but at the same time they were the most brash and ignorant statements he could possibly make. Every word to him seemed strategic and purposeful to make her feel bad, but all they did was make him look like a cunt.

"You're such a piece of shit." Margaret said it flatly, there was resentment in her tone but it was flat and simple, not sharp, angry, or biting. She got up and stormed out of the room. She was tired of the bullshit, and tired of the jealousy.

Both the phantom of Bernard's past and the real Bernard followed her. The real Bernie, he wasn't exactly sure why he followed her. He knew he couldn't speak to her, change anything, or make a difference. He just responded automatically, the same way his memory self did. No matter how angry or indignant or hurt he got he had this sort of automatic reaction to follow her, to try and stop her from being mad about the very things he himself made her mad about. It was a cycle of stupidity, he would upset her and say as much awful things as he could, but chase her down and force-feed her an apology the moment she got offended. Even though the real Bernard could see this, he still found himself helplessly following her out the door, although it definitely did not lead where it led him that same awful night.

Bernard instead found himself walking out the door to another cold Oregon night, though this one was made warm by the presence of Margaret, the woman he loved with all his stupid heart. He walked out his own front door, but found himself outside the door of a completely random house, now walking down a street on the avenue of absurdity to the house he had shared with Margaret. Unlike before, the illusion of past and present had completely dissipated, Bernard was walking drunkenly with his arm once more around the woman he loved, and she was holding a bottle of wine, drunkenly singing her heart out.

"LOOOOOVE! WILL TEAR US APART AGAIIINNN!" She sang her heart out, not a care in the world for anyone that might be watching, anyone that might be judging, even anyone who might be annoyed with there drunken signaling. You could see it in Margaret's eyes and in her smile, the only thing that she cared about at that moment was how much she loved the man next to her, and the only thing he cared about then or now, was how much he loved her.

"LOVE WILL TEAR USSS APART AGAIN!" He half unwillingly sang along with her, contrary to before it seemed he was now reliving the memory rather than experiencing it first hand. Despite this he was not reliving the intoxicating glow he felt that night, but the warmth of the past gave it's own sort of "buzz," and he felt like singing out with her now while he still could.

Before they could get into the next verse of the Joy Division song, admittedly a verse neither of them quite knew the lyrics to, a man walked up to them, he looked a bit older than both of them, but not altogether old in a sense that he couldn't quite connect with the two. Truth was up to that point they had failed to really make any friends…or hadn't they? Bernard could swear he remembered going to parties somewhere but he couldn't quite place it.

"Dude you guys sounded awesome! Are you from around here?" The man had clearly been drinking a bit too, although his questioning seemed more friendly than the result of some sort of drunken rudeness.

"Oh yeah we actually just moved in over on.." The next words, Bernard could not hear. He heard something, although it sounded as if he was listening to her from underwater. "Yeah we just moved in a couple months back" Margaret beamed, proud of their recent move in.

"Oh what!? That's awesome you guys! I live over on.." Again to Bernard the words seemed muddled and unintelligible. "We should totally kick it you guys!"

"Sounds great." Bernard had remembered exactly the words he had said that night, though now he said it with a flatness that was clearly not detected by the apparitions around him. They just went on as if everything was normal.

"Have a good night then you two!" The man smiled and kept walking on his path, and the young couple continued on theirs. For Bernard, things were starting to get hazy at this point, although he was almost positive the two never took him up on his plans, that was right before things had gotten…bad.

"Hey!" Margaret snapped him out of his contemplation, and grabbed him by the cheek so he was looking her right in the eyes. He stared into the warm, glowing, drunken eyes of the woman he loved. He saw a warmth that he had destroyed, he saw a love that she would no longer remember, he saw affection that had been wiped from her the same way this beating in his heart would soon be taken away from him. "I love you, and I always will. I'm so happy that we have a new life now." And she pulled him in for a kiss, a kiss Bernard reciprocated with all his heart, although by the time Bernard pulled away from the kiss, Margaret was gone, and the beautiful snowy night was gone too.

When the night had faded away Bernard found that he was no longer in Oregon, instead he was sitting out in front of the library by his old house, sitting alone and waiting anxiously to see if Margaret would arrive. He looked down in his hand and remembered he had been holding a fast food cup filled with whiskey and soda. He realized alcohol was prominent in most of these memories, and wondered how long he had been trying to forget. Had he subconsciously been trying to eliminate any traces of memory, any trace of sadness or familiarity or any emotion at all from his day to day life. For the past few instances he had been feeling as if this procedure, this long process of forgetting everything to make room for something knew was something unequivocally painful, something he could hardly bear in the moment. Looking back on it now, he realized that forgetting things that made him sad had been his due process for the last year of his life, and maybe it wasn't such a surprise that he had decided the go the full distance now when he had been leading up to it for quite awhile. He ran out of time to ponder this reflection, because Margaret was walking up to him now, coming from a distant shadow and not from any true location. The way she walked had always enamored Bernard, there was no jaunt in her step and she walked with the sureness and swiftness of someone who only wanted to go from one destination to the next without being noticed, like the flashing of a headlight on a car trying to pass unnoticed from a night out. Margaret sat down next to him at the bench, while she sat next to him there was a measured distance she put between the two of them. Bernard remembered she had been quite angry with him that night…another large fight over something he could no longer recall. As he tried to piece together the details of what had happened in order to speak, he funded he didn't need to and the words came from him quite automatically.

"I want you to move away with me…" He stumbled. "I wanna move to Oregon, just get away from all of this, forget everything and start over. I've already found a place and they said they'd take couples." He spilled out the facts with no tact or deliberation, only a sincere request to try and begin again.

Margaret did not immediately respond, instead she took out a cigarette and lit it with precision. As she exhaled the secondary drag, she finally broke the silence. "When?"

"Next month…I know it's soon and I know that I'm asking a lot but…but I love you. I love you with all my heart and I know that if we started over…if we were somewhere new..None of this would ever happen again. This could all just be some unpleasant memory we forget about one day when we're happy somewhere else." Bernard explained with some deliberation.

Margaret took another drag or two of her cigarette. She was killing Bernard with the anticipation, but the lack of an immediate no still filled his chest with hope like a balloon with air. "I'll think about it." She decided at last. There was something so calm and cool about her that even in the present Bernard could appreciate. Something about the calmness which she approached the storm of their relationship filled his heart with longing.

Bernard pulled Margaret close, at the time he had been drunk and stupid, but in the present he appreciated the closeness more than he had the night he was reliving. He appreciated the way it felt to hold her near, and like that night he began to sing a song…but the words wouldn't come to him. He was sure he could hear the melody, and he was sure he was saying something, but he couldn't hear any of it.

"Really? I told you to sing this to me on a good night? Fuckin idiot…" Margaret looked him in the eyes, her tone was critical but her eyes were somewhat bemused, betraying the hostility she was trying to reflect in her words.

Bernard continued to sing, although the tune now evaded him more than ever. He was sure he knew the song, but the words began to sound like static on a television, and as he tried to gaze into his lover's eyes he found that she had the appearance of static as well. This wasn't right…he knew this wasn't right…He tried to recall her….blue eyes? Green? Her…Red hair? No it was definitely brown. That wasn't right either it was….For a moment Bernard felt he was staring at a complete stranger. He didn't understand the words he was singing, and he didn't understand who he was singing them to. All knew was he was trying to hold something together, hold something together which now seemed to him foggy and incomplete, which now in this moment of static unwelcomeness seemed completely foreign. As he reached out to pull her closer, he noticed he too had the texture of an incomplete image, a buzzing static which had no form except formlessness, and as he tried to pull her closer the whole world went blank around them, and soon switched to a new channel of thought

When the world came to around him, Bernard felt himself alone at a small clearing by a lake not too far from his house. HE was crying HE had been crying then and he was crying now. At the time these tears were shed because he had not been able to speak to Margaret for weeks, although the tears came now because he felt he had not spoken to her ever. In his heart there was less and less to miss, but as time went by he knew he was missing more and more. He realized that something very dear to him was slowly disappearing, and at the time he had known what had vanished from him. In this moment though he did not understand exactly why he was crying, but he understood there were tears to be shed. He was seated by a clearing at a lake, a place he had spent many an evenings with his high school girlfriend…Why was he able to remember her and nothing else? Why was there a bottle of whiskey in his hand? Why could he remember all the times he had gotten drunk and nothing else? Why was there this intense burning in his heart? He didn't know or understand, but the tears came to him the same they had come to him that night. He cried, cried because there was nothing, nothing but misery to remember, and as time went by Bernard was sure that was all he would remember. A song was playing in his headphones, though the music seemed distorted, he recognized that it was by…Joy Division. That much was clear to him.

"If I ever…If I ever get another chance to see you…If I ever get another chance I won't fuck it up…I promise you" The words to him now seemed so hollow yet so prominent, there was nothing but conviction in his voice even if he couldn't understand the conviction now. He knew there was something missing…someone missing, and he knew that like then he would give anything to have them back. Anything but the memory of them, yet he realized that was exactly what was missing.

(Author's Notes: Yeahhh….So plot twist the song for this chapter is actually Love Will Tear Us Apart, by Joy Division. The other Shamalan twist here is the ending, because the ending is I kill myself….Wubbalubbadubdub!)


End file.
